Jueves, 25 de noviembre de 2021 (Continuación)

In February, Exiled Tibetans in Dharmsala, India, protested holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. (AP/Ashwini Bhatia)

China’s human rights abuses have been getting a lot of attention in the run-up to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. The disappearance and apparently staged re-appearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai in creepy videos posted online has shocked millions. The Chinese government will silence anyone who dares speak up against the behavior of the ruling Communist Party — including its ongoing genocide campaign against Uyghur Muslims.

But that attention hasn’t resulted in much concrete action. The International Olympic Committee, rather than stand up for human rights, has helped the Chinese authorities to push their propaganda. The Biden administration is planning a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, which is better than doing nothing, but not by much.…  Seguir leyendo »

Women take hit on jobs as Latin America recovers from the pandemic

At the height of pandemic restrictions in Mexico last year, Lorena Romero’s employer halved her hours — and the single mother of two is still struggling to get her working life back on track.

Romero wants to step up her hours and has looked at various roles — including live-in domestic work positions about two hours from her house. But the need to look after her teenage children, who have not yet returned to school full-time, makes it hard to find suitable opportunities.

“I can’t take that kind of work right now; I need to be close to my kids . …  Seguir leyendo »

Hong Kong’s Universities Have Fallen. There May Be No Turning Back

For nearly a quarter of a century, the Pillar of Shame has stood on the campus of Hong Kong University — a 26-foot-tall commemoration of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Last month, the university ordered the pillar’s removal.

The order is a striking blow in the government’s ongoing campaign to erase the memory of the 1989 atrocity: First, it banned the candlelight vigil held annually on June 4, arrested the vigil’s key organizers and raided a museum that documents the history of the massacre. But this is about far more than a statue.

Along with the removal of the Pillar of Shame, political pressure from the government and university administrations has incapacitated two major university student unions.…  Seguir leyendo »

America Has More Than One Spanglish

It’s easy to think that where language is concerned, in the United States we have a sort of vanilla, mainstream English and then some minor variations upon it — Southern, Upper Midwest, Southern California “Valley” maybe. Our dialects overall aren’t as different from one another as the various ones in Britain — Cockney, Scottish, West Country — because English hasn’t been here long enough for the dialects to drift their different ways to such an extent. Modern media makes our dialects even more uniform than they would be anyway. And, it seems, immigrants bring their languages here, only to see them blow away in the wind after a generation or two.…  Seguir leyendo »